I tend to be pretty proud of the fact that, as a reviewer, I have been able to use and compare many of the mobile operating systems available.  I have spent considerable time with Windows Mobile, iPhone/iPod Touch, and WebOS.  I have also tested Nokia, and some of the feature phones available on different networks.  Other than Blackberry, the only mobile operating system I had never seen up close and in person was the Android OS from Google.  All that changed when Sprint recently loaned me the Samsung Moment, which joins the HTC Hero as the latest Android device in their lineup.  Let’s dive in for a closer look.

What’s In The Box: There were really no surprises in this box.  I was disappointed by the fact that Samsung never seems to include a pouch, case, or screen protector with their phones and mobile devices.  That kind of protection is important, and it would be nice to have something in the box, at least to hold your device until you can order a more permanent case.  Nonetheless, in addition to the phone and 1440 mAh Lithium Ion battery, you will also find:

• AC adaptor plug
• Micro-USb sync/charge cable
• Stereo headphones/headset
• 2 GB microSD memory card
• microSD adaptor
• assorted manuals

Like I said, there is no protection, such as a screen protector, case, or pouch; which is something I have grown accustomed to from HTC phones.  It also would have been nice to find a wrist strap (since the phone does have a wrist strap slot, and a car charger (which I admit is rarely included these days).  I also have to lament, once again, the demise of the desktop cradle.  In the “good old days” all of PDAs and what we would today call smartphones came equipped with a cradle which could sync with your computer and charge the phone.  It has been a while since these have been standard, and I really think that is a shame. 

Hardware: Let’s go ahead and take a quick walk around and check out the hardware on this things.  One of the first things I noticed were the number of buttons on this phone.  They gave it an almost retro feel.  In the world of the two button iPhone and Palm Pre, a phone with so many buttons can feel a bit cumbersome.

I know you want to check out that gorgeous screen, and we will get there in due time.  But let’s go ahead and start on the top.  You will not find much up there.  Just the headphone jack and wrist strap slot (again, wrist strap perplexingly not included).  As seems to be the trend these days, the headphone jack is covered by a little rubber door when not in use.  I hate these little rubber doors.  They constantly get in my way until the hinge eventually snaps off, leaving the door to float gently into the garbage…where it belongs.  I wish phone manufacturers would either find a better way to protect the jacks or just leave them open. 

There is also not much to see on the left hand side.  Just the volume rocker.  Depending on the context, you can use this to adjust the ringer volume, speaker volume, or even the volume of the apps you are using.  This is one of the few areas where I really appreciate having a hard button instead of reaching for the touch screen.  The only problem is the location.  Putting those buttons on the side means I am constantly adjusting the volume by accident when I am holding the phone, or even just taking it out of my pocket.

There are no controls on the bottom of the phone.  On the right, however, are a few things you will want to see.  On top of that side is the micro-USB jack.  I love the fact that micro-USB is becoming such an industry standard.  Almost everything I own uses the same plug now, meaning I do not have to carry a dozen cables when I travel.  A little further down are two buttons: Voice Control and Camera.  Both have pretty obvious functionality.  Though, like many of the hard buttons on this phone, I think their necessity is extremely questionable on a touch screen device.

Slide the screen to the right to reveal the keyboard underneath.  I have to admit that I have grown a bit tired of side sliding keyboards, which require the screen to shift into landscape mode before you can begin typing.  There is always too much lag before the phone is ready.  The Moment impressed me in this respect.  I will not say that the phone switched into landscape mode instantaneously, but it was close enough that the lag was negligible.  Probably between 1 and 1.5 seconds by my count.  Not bad at all.

I have to admit that I was not a huge fan of this keyboard.  It is a four row keyboard with the numbers on top and three rows of letters.  I really prefer a five row keyboard, which allows for a more natural layout of special keys.  In this one, although the keyboard follows a standard QWERTY layout, the special keys are scattered throughout the keyboard, making it difficult and unintuitive to use.  I also found that the spacing between keys was wider than expected.  This spreads the keys far enough apart that it can be difficult to reach with your thumbs.  I found myself doing an awful lot more hunting than pecking.  I will say, however, that I was pleased to find the four arrow keys on the keyboard; an omission which I has really caused problems on the Palm Pre. 

The back of the phone contains the 3.2 megapixel camera and flash.  We’ll talk more about the quality of this camera in a bit.  For now,I just wanted to acknowledge its presence.  It is not quite as nice as the 5 megapixel camera found on Verizon’s Droid phone, but it is pretty good.  Take off that back to reveal the 1440 mAh Lithium ion battery.  According to Sprint, this battery will give you up to 5.5 hours of continuous talk time.   And I have to say, it seemed to live up to that claim quite well.  Depending on what i was doing, I was able to eek up to 12 hours or more out of this battery.

Behind the battery is the microSD card slot.  I love the fact that this was included to supplement the on-board memory.  Samsung included a 2GB card in the box, but you can use anything up to a 32 GB memory card, which is really pretty impressive. 

OK.  Let’s go ahead and turn the phone over and talk about the face.  The most obvious feature here is the massive 3.2 inch AMOLED screen.  Remember, a while back, it was the folks at Samsung who explained the difference between AMOLED, OLED, and LED. 

Here you can see the screen next to the iPhone.  Although it is slightly smaller, the picture is much crisper because it is an AMOLED, not LED screen. 

You can also see how this screen compared to the Palm Pre…

And the Zune HD. 

I was really impressed by the screen on the Samsung Moment.  It is large and crisp, exactly what you would expect on a device like this.

Above the screen is the earpiece, which is huge.  This really did a great job of addressing a pet peeve of mine.  On many smartphones, the earpiece is tiny, in order to hide it within the stylish design.  This results in the phone constantly sliding around and misaligning on my ear.  It may sound silly, but the result is my inability to adequately hear phone calls (or maybe I am just losing my hearing).  Although the earpiece is less well hidden on the Moment, I found it to be much more effective.

Beneath the screen are a million…OK not quite a million, but a lot of …buttons.  First are the phone call buttons.  These are nice to have, but not entirely necessary.  Plenty of phones, including the iPhone and Palm Pre have done a fantastic job of incorporating these functions into the touchscreen.  Between the phone buttons you will find the trackball.  I had absolutely no use for this trackball.  This is a touchscreen device, and the trackball felt very out of place.  Once again, it felt to me as though Samsung had stumbled upon some old plans from 2005 when they designed this hardware.

Between the phone buttons and the screen are three soft buttons, just like we saw on the Samsung Instinct HD.  I really like these buttons, which give you a back button, home button, and menu.  The only thing I did not like here is that there is an launcher screen which is controlled via the touchscreen.  The access button for this is right over the menu button, which made it easy to confuse the two.  Furthermore, while the soft buttons were nice, again, they were not really necessary.  As we have seen on a myriad of other devices, it would not have been difficult to control these functions via the touchscreen.  I would have preferred to see a larger screen and fewer buttons, but that is just me.

Finally, now that we have kicked the proverbial tires, I thought it would be fun to take a peek under the hood.  Powering this one is a 32bit Samsung S3C6410, 800MHz.  That 800 MHZ clock speed sure does sound nice, and is a quite a bit faster than the iPhone 3Gs and Palm Pre, both of which clock in at 600MHz.  The Motorola Droid is even slower at 550 MHz.  Before you all jump on me, though, I should point out that while clock speed is great, it is far from the sole factor in the overall speed of your device.  In fact, that impressive clock speed actually has far less impact than the processor.  The Moment relies on Samsung’s own processor,which powers most Samsung and Acer branded phones.  That chip is not nearly as fast or powerful as some of the other options available.  So, even at 800 MHz clock speed, it will not behave nearly as fast or as powerfully as the Palm Pre, Motorola Droid, or Nokia N900, all of which rely on the state of the art Texas Instruments OMAP 3430 CPU. 

The biggest impression this one left, however, was on my hand.  The Moment just feels like a brick.  Even though sliding keyboards can often cause an increase in thickness of the phone, this seems even more excessive than most.  Thin is in these days, and at 0.63 inches, the Moment is anything but thin.

Interface and OS: Like I said when we were getting started, I had never used the Android Operating System before I started using the Moment.  I had hoped it would arrive loaded with Android 2.0, but that was not to be.  Sprint tells me they are researching upgrade paths for a potential upgrade to android 2.0.  Until they get that figured out, this one will remain running Android 1.5, otherwise known as Cupcake.

The main screen actually consists of three pages.  You can swipe your finger left or right to move between them.  The pages will begin as a blank slate, ready for you to add any content in any configuration you want.  This actually reminded me an awful lot of SPB Mobile Shell 3 for Windows Mobile.

What is really cool here is that you can add pretty much anything on your device to this three page interface.  This gives you instant access to any files, apps, media, photos, even contacts which you want to access on a regular basis.  Even better, though, are the widgets.  Widgets are small windows into your device, which display selected information on your desktop.  To be honest, they are a lot like Windows Mobile today screen plug-ins, only significantly more robust. I absolutely loved these widgets, which really made for a considerably more useful and usable interface.  Unlike today screen plug ins on Windows Mobile, I did not notice a significant decrease in speed or performance of the device, even when I activated multiple widgets.  It worked great!  My only complaint was that I ran out of space rather quickly.  I wish there had been a way to add additional pages to the interface.

Across the top of the main interface, you can see the notification bar.  If any of your apps have something to tell you, it will appear here.  Just grab that bar and pull down to open up the notifications.  From there, you can tap any notification to open the appropriate app and get more information.

On the bottom of the screen, you can see a small arrow. Just swipe this arrow up to open the launcher screen.  This screen will display every app you have loaded on your device.  I liked this functionality, which was similar to the launcher screen on the Palm Pre.  Tap any icon to open the app, or tap and hold to drop it onto your main interface page.  The only thing I did not like here was that there is no way to filter or organize apps.  It would be nice to be able to create separate folders or pages of apps in order to make it easier to organize and find the app you need.  This is tempered, however, by the fact that you can easily search your apps (assuming you know the title).  Just open the app launcher screen and start typing in order to search through your apps.  This worked really well, but would you expect anything less than a fantastic search feature on a device made by Google…

I did find the layout of the launcher screen to be a bit odd.  Specifically, that arrow which opens the screen sits right above the Menu button, giving the impression that the arrow and launcher offer the same functionality.  I constantly hit the wrong one, pushing Menu when I was trying to find an app in the launcher, and vice versa.

The last thing I want to mention here is the lock screen, which is really pretty plain.  When you turn on your device, instead of finding some fancy animation or a slider, you will simply get a message which says, “Tap Menu To unlock.”  That’s it.  Oh…there is also a clock there.  Now, I do not need fancy animations or sliders (though they are cool) and this unlock screen worked well enough.  That being said, it just felt like a lot of wasted space.  It would have been great if you could have made better use of this space by displaying notifications, showing your upcoming agenda, or any manner of other bits of information or widgets.

I have to say, I was really very impressed by the Android Operating System.  Google really seems to have nailed it with this one.  Ironically, though, it felt like everything Windows Mobile was supposed to have been for the personal user…and more.

Phone:There is a reason these devices are generally called phones, and not Twitter machines, social networkers, or something similar.  Their primary purpose is to make phone calls, so let’s take a look at how the Moment fared.

To start, just tap the phone button to open the dialer.  Or, you can just dial using the keyboard from the main screen.  As  soon as you start entering numbers, the dialer screen will automatically open.  In addition to the dialer pad, there are three other tabs on this screen.  You will find your call log, which displays your recent incoming, outgoing, and missed calls; your contacts list; and your favorites.  Setting a favorite is easy.  Just open any contact on your phone and tap the star on top.  The contact will automatically be added to your favorites list.  I thought this all felt an awful lot like the dialer screen on the Samsung Instinct (which comes as no surprise), but I thought it worked well there, and it works well here.

Incoming calls displayed pretty well, if not a bit plainly.  A message will appear on your screen announcing the call.  It is nothing special, it shows the identity of the incoming caller.  If you have a photo assigned to them, that will display as well, but that is really all you will get.  No fancy animation, no gesture to answer.  Just tap the phone button to answer, or the hang up button to ignore.  I was a little disappointed by this setup, which felt a little too much like a throwback to Windows Mobile 5.  After using so many of the modern phones, most of which eschew many of these hard buttons, in reliance of screen gestures, this whole setup just felt a little too much like a backwards slide to me.  Even the Instinct HD used a more modern, gesture based system for answering calls.  Then again, since Android is a completely open source platform, I would not be surprised to find some add-ons for this functionality somewhere on the web.

Of course, all of this is just window dressing for what you really want to know…how is the call quality?  I have heard a lot of complaints about Android based phones on Verizon’s network (such as the Motorola Droid) and their poor call quality.  I really did not have any such problems with the Samsung Moment on Sprint.  I could both hear and be heard extremely well. with this phone.  That being said, I did notice that while the Palm Pre consistently got 4-5 bars in my house, the Samsung Moment scored only 2-3 on the same Sprint netowrk, making it much more likely to drop calls unexpectedly.

Web browsing: As the smartphone market continues to grow, the web browsing experience becomes ever more important.  It is rare these days to find a prominent website which does not feature a mobile counterpart (JAMM has one). 

The browser which comes with the Moment is actually a custom browser, developed by Google for the Android phones.  This Android browser is really nice, which should come as no surprise to anyone who has used Google’s Chrome browser.  In fact, it felt a lot like the best in class Opera browser.

One thing I really liked here was how easy it was to switch between windows.  There is no tabbed browsing here.  Instead, there is a page of tiles, each representing an open windows.  Just select the Windows option under the menu to access this page and instantly switch to a different website.

The only thing I did not like is that there is no easy way to zoom in and out, in order to change your reading view.  While this may not seem like a big problem,it can really make reading a non-mobile site quite difficult.  Overall though, I found that this browser was easy to use, easy to navigate, and for the most part easy to read.

Email and Messaging: I was really surprised to find that the main email program on the Android was Microsoft Outlook.   Really, I was not expecting that at all!  As you might expect, therefore, email has a very Windows Mobile feel to it.  Sure, it is dressed up a bit, with a more modern feeling interface that what I have found in most Windows Mobile devices, but in terms of functionality, it is pretty much the same Outlook that you find in Windows Mobile.

Like Windows Mobile, Outlook handled my Windows Live and Gmail accounts with no problems, but had a little trouble finding my Google Domain account.  In fact, overall, I was disappointed by the poor integration Android offered with my Google Domain. 

SMS text messaging also worked just fine.  Though I will say, I did not care much for the black interface.  I did like the fact that it was easy to search your contacts to create a new message, and I loved the fact that messages are threaded, keeping related messages organized together.  I just did not care for the interface and its black skin, which featured extremely poor shading to distinguish between your sent and received messages.  I have not looked very hard in the App Marketplace, but hopefully someone has come up with a better interface for this.

Camera and Photos: I am typically somewhat critical of mobile phone cameras, but I have to admit that I have seen quite an improvement in this area lately.  The Moment sports a 3.2 megapixel camera with a built in flash.  The pictures it took were much better than expected, though I will say I was disappointed by how poorly this camera stacked up against the one in the Instinct HD, which was also manufactured by Samsung.  The Instinct HD featured a myriad of features, both basic and advanced, including video recording (in VGA or HD).  In contrast, the Moment offered none of these advanced features, and very few basic options.  It is really one of the least robust cameras I have found in a mobile phone.  So, very nice photos are outweighed by the lack of control over your photo composition, including the inability to zoom or record video at any resolution.  I wish we could take the camera and photo software out of the Instinct HD and drop it in here.

Multimedia: The built-in media player is really somewhat unique.  The main screen consists of just four large buttons, artist, album, song, and playlist.  I was surprised that there was no option to sort by genre, which is also very common.  Since I do not use playlists much, I would have preferred to have genre there instead of playlist, but that is just my personal preference.

Just tap on any of the four buttons to load your music.  Now, get ready to wait…and wait.  It really just takes an enormously long time to load your music into the interface.  The good news, though, is that this wait only needs to be endured once.  After you have loaded your music into the player, it will remain there in the library for easy retrieval the next time.  Once loaded, you will find an alphabetical list of your music, organized by your selection on the main screen.  You can scroll through this list, or use the list icon on the right to jump straight to your song.

Once you select your song, you will be presented with a nice view of the album art, along with all of the metadata (song title, album, and artist).  Or at least that is what you are supposed to see.  I had terrible problems with the metadata and album are loading from any of my music.  The media player could find the song title just fine, but the album art, album title, and artist were lost to this one.  The only songs I could get to work properly were those which I downloaded from Amazon directly.

Once your music is loaded, of course, it is time to start listening an enjoying.  I thought the sound quality was not bad. Not necessarily on par with my Zune HD or even iPod Touch, but certainly at least as good as Samsung’s portable media players, which had decent, mid-range sound quality. 

The nice thing here was that I was able to load all of my music onto a memory card, and play it directly from there.  Since the Moment can handle up to a 32 GB memory card, you can have just as much music in here as you could on the Zune HD or Apple iPhone, and still have plenty of internal memory left over for apps and data.

With music working well enough to pass the Moment off as a mid-range media player, let’s take a look at how well video is going to play.  The first thing I found was that it was a bit confusing to find your video content.  sure, you can find videos online using YouTube or Sprint TV, but if you want to watch the video you recorded (using some other camera because the Moment cannot record video) then you will want to look for them in the Gallery App.  Once you open the gallery app, it will search your memory (both main memory and external memory cards, and load all of your video into the library.

Once loaded, your videos will appear as thumbnails in the library, making them easy to search and find.  Just tap the one you wish to view, and sit back.  Unfortunately, however, video did not fear nearly as well as music.  While the screen was incredible, the processor on the Samsung Moment, like that on the Instinct HD, was simply not sufficient to handle video playback well.  As a result, video on the screen appeared blurry and digitized.  Disappointing to say the least.

Apps and App Marketplace: They say any mobile operating system lives and dies by its apps.  Well, if that is true, then the Android OS is in pretty good shape.  Mind you, the App Market may not be as robust as the iPhone’s App Store, but it is off to a fast start with apps and games in a myriad of different categories.  As an added bonus, you will also find a full repertoire of Google apps in there (though perplexingly not Google Docs).

The Market itself, like the rest of the Android OS felt very minimalist to me.  You can scroll through apps (divided by category) or games, or search the entire entire store for specific keywords.  Again, this worked great, but what else would you expect from Google. 

Once you find the app you want, just select it for more information.  I did find it odd, though, that there were no screen captures along with the descriptions of each app.  This made it pretty difficult to know whether the app will be worthwhile or not. 

One nice feature of the Market is the My Downloads section, which will show every app you have installed on your device.  From here, you can install any available updates.  This follows the example of the iPhone App Store, putting all of your updates in one place.  Though I was disappointed to find that you will need to download each update individually,  There is no option to download all updates at once.

Memory: The internal storage on the device is a little disappointing at 256MB.  Mind you, that is not bad by traditional smartphone standards, but we have not been operating in a traditional smartphone world for quite some time.  Today, memory is tiny and cheap, meaning we have many devices with 8, 16, 32, and even up to 64 GB of built in memory.  In a world measured in predominantly double digit gigabytes, 256 MB sounds almost antiquated.

Fortunately, the Samsung Moment compensates for the slight on-board memory by including a microSD card expansion slot.  The phone includes a 2GB card, but you can go all the way up to 32 GB, which should be more than enough for all of your storage and multimedia needs.  I was disappointed to find the card hidden behind the battery, which means you must open the back and remove the battery in order to swap the memory card, but the fact that it was there at all puts it ahead of the iPhone and WebOS based devices.

Conclusion: I think the thing that struck me the most about the Android Operating System was just how much it felt like Windows Mobile.  But to say it felt like Windows Mobile is really selling this one short.   It would be more accurate to say that this felt like what Windows Mobile should have been.  Sure, there were some things I would have done differently, but overall, the operating system worked incredibly well.  I was a little perplexed by the design of the hardware, however, which started off with something of a dated feel.  It reminded me an awful lot of my Windows Mobile 5 Sprint Mogul.   I hope Samsung sticks with the Android OS, which seems to be working great, but they really need to find a more current designer who can put together an Android phone that can compete with the Motorola Droid, and HTC Hero.

The Samsung Moment is available from Sprint for $479 ($179 with new contract and rebates).

What I Liked:

• Camera took very nice pictures
• Good battery life
• External microSD memory card, with up to 32 GB capacity
• 3.2 inch AMOLED screen
• multi-page, customizable interface
• Widgets on the main interface
• Launcher screen gives you easy access to apps
• Browser worked great
• App marketplace is well stocked, and adds to the functionality of the device

What Needs Improvement:

• No case or pouch included
• Design relied too heavily on hardware buttons
• Memory card is located behind the battery
• 0.63 inches makes for an extremely thick device
• Relies on Microsoft Outlook for email
• Very plain feel to many of the screens
• Video did not playback well
• Only 256 MB of internal memory

Related posts:

1. Sprint Gets Its “Moment”. Samsung Releases The Samsung Moment Android Device to the Sprint Network.
2. Review: Samsung Instinct HD on Sprint
3. Review: Samsung Intrepid
4. Unboxing – The Samsung Upstage from Sprint via Gadgetell
5. Sprint Courageously Ventures Into The World Of Windows Mobile 6.5 With The Intrepid From Samsung